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Article 4714 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: orourke@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Systems Reply I
Message-ID: <45418@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 25 Mar 92 14:16:23 GMT
References: <44765@dime.cs.umass.edu> <6422@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Mar18.064723.6873@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <6517@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
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Perhaps rather than each discussant being required to explicate
a theory of meaning, we could just probe each others' theories
via a few test cases.  Since my own interpretation of the phrase
"meaningless symbol" was recently questioned, here is a relevant
test case.
	A 2.5 yr old child is told by her father, "This is a
guitar.  It makes music when you pluck the strings."  The child
had never seen nor heard a guitar before.  She instantly creates
a symbol or mental construct in her head to associate with what
she has been told.  Call this symbol <guitar>.  Later that day
she uses the word "guitar" several times correctly.

	1. Was the symbol <guitar> meaningless before the above
	conversation with her father?
	My answer:  The symbol didn't exist.

	2. Is <guitar> a meaningless symbol 5 minutes after the
	above conversation?
	My answer:  No.

	3. Does the symbol <guitar> have meaning at t=+5min?
	My answer:  If forced to give a yes or no answer, I would have
	to say yes.  But it has only a primitive meaning.

	4. Does the child understand the concept of a "guitar" at
	t=+5min?
	My answer: No.

	5. Does the child understand "guitar" when she is 6 yrs old,
	can spell the word, and can distinguish a guitar from a violin
	or a cello, but has never seen a ukelele?
	My answer: Yes.  But she doesn't understand the concept as
	well as Segovia.

In my view, symbols are not meaningless from the moment of creation.
Therefore they must have some meaning, but meaning is a continuum,
and symbols can have meaning much before the owner of the symbols
can be said to understand them; and understanding is itself a continuum.
	Given this viewpoint, I find it hard to appreciate objections
of the form, "But how can a program ever attach meaning to its meaningless
symbols?"  As soon as the symbol is "given" to the program by the
programmers (or as soon as the program creates its own symbol), it
is not meaningless:  it has some primitive meaning derived from the
context of the giving/creation.  And the meaning of a symbol can
change, grow, become more complex, over a period of years.


